Juan Gris

Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris

Sale: vente Kahnweiler, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 7-8, 1923, lot 279

Private Collection, Paris

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York

Georges Seligmann, New York

Rose Fried Gallery, New York

Mrs. Benjamin Watson, New York

G. David Thompson, Pittsburgh

Fine Arts Associates, New York

Galerie Berggruen, Paris

Norman Granz, Geneva (sold: Sotheby's, London, April 23, 1968, lot 5 )

Acquavella Galleries, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Galerie Tarica, Paris

Acquired from the above by the present owners

New York, Buchholz Gallery, Juan Gris, 1950, no. 3

Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Four Spaniards, 1953, no. 33, illustrated in the catalogue

Dortmund, Museum am Ostwall & Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Juan Gris, 1965-66, no. 20, illustrated in the catalogue

Bordeaux, Galerie des Beaux Arts & Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Les Cubistes, 1973, no. 87, illustrated in the catalogue

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie & Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Juan Gris, 1992-93, no. 45, illustrated in the catalogue

Marseille, Musée Catini, Juan Gris, Peintures et dessins, 1887-1927, 1998-99, no. 30, illustrated in the catalogue

Saint-Tropez, Musée de Saint-Tropez, Les Chemins du Cubisme, 1999, illustrated in color in the catalogue

London, Tate Modern, Century City, Art and Culpture in the Modern Metropolis, 2001, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Il Cubismo, 2004-05, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Madrid, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Juan Gris: Paintings and drawings, 1910-1927, 2005, no. 45, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Paul Erich Küppers, Der Kubismus, Leipzig, 1920, illustrated pl. 19

Rudolf Blümner, "Kubismus," Jahrbuch der Jungen Kunst, Leipzig, 1923, illustrated p. 336

P.G. Bruguiere, "La Presence de Juan Gris," in Cahiers d'art, Paris, 1951, illustrated p. 120

José Camon Aznar, Picasso y el Cubismo, Madrid, 1956, fig. 32, illustrated p. 67

Paul Waldo Schwartz, The Cubists, London & New York, 1971, illustrated p. 90

Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, Juan Gris, Barcelona, 1974, no. 274, illustrated p. 211

Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. I, Paris, 1977, no. 101, illustrated p. 161

Paz Garcia Ponce de Leon, Juan Gris, La Pasion por el Cubismo, illustrated p. 266

This work is in good condition. Collage on linen. There are some losses and cracks in the paper at the center-left of the word "le" in "le journal", and there are restorations in the lower-right quadrant. There are scattered small breaks in the paper at the lower right and upper center. There may also be some restoration in the black elements in the top half of the composition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The exquisite Tabac, journal et bouteille de vin rosé epitomizes the synthetic cubist idiom Gris developed with Picasso and Braque in the years leading up to World War I. These initial years of cubism would prove enormously influential for Modernist discourse through the twentieth century and this collage encapsulates the revolutionary fervor of that moment. Gris constructs this composition with portions of tobacco packages, a daily newspaper and faux bois patterning set off by painterly gestures of shading and trompe l'oeil effects. The work imparts the spontaneity of a tabletop bristling with the paraphernalia of Bohemian life in Paris.

Gris created this still-life in the month before the outbreak of World War I, just when Cubism was at the high point of its synthetic mode. The use of collage distinguished this movement within Cubism, appearing first in 1912 with Picasso's Nature morte à la chaise canée. Over the course of the 1910s, several artists would adopt the perspectival and compositional devices initiated by  Braque and Picasso, but few would be as highly regarded for their talent and vision as Gris. Recalling this period and her association with the Cubists, Gertrude Stein identified Gris as the artist of foremost importance among these cultural figures: "The only real Cubism is that of Picasso and Juan Gris. Picasso created it and Juan Gris permeated it with his clarity and exaltation" (G. Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, New York, 1933, p. 111).

Mark Rosenthal has written of the artist's 1914 still-lifes, "A collage by Gris is an immensely subtle enterprise. Underlying is what Kahnweiler called a 'flat, coloured architecture.' By this he means an overall structure, largely based on regularly shaped planes that are contiguous or overlapping... Each fragment may have three aspects: first, as a pictorial element; second, as a sign of a representational object, by analogy of color or by containing a visual clue; third, as simply a piece of paper ('thing-in-itself'), with a certain pattern having tactile and material interest incorporated into the whole composition. Adding yet further, Gris drew, painted, and/or modeled these fragments, so that they are barely perceived in a completely forthright manner. The still-life representation, which is the outermost 'skin,' weaves a relationship with these structural aspects. Abstraction and representation are moot qualities in these highly refined works" (Mark Rosenthal, Juan Gris (exhibition catalogue), University of California, Berkeley (and other locations), 1984-85, p. 53).

Printed newspaper served as seminal fodder for Synthetic Cubism. The intrusion of mechanical printing onto the painted surface provided both a formal revolution and an archival gesture. The political and cultural atmosphere of wartime France plays out among the newspaper clippings found in the works of Picasso, Braque and Gris between 1912 and 1915.  In the current work, Gris includes a portion of the front page of Le Journal, a daily newspaper published beginning in 1892 which had become ubiquitous in Paris café culture by World War I. The geometric font of the headline typeset appealed to the Cubists and provided a foil to the more ornate typography of publications such as Le Matin which appeared in contemporaneous works, such as Le bouteille de vin rosé, also painted in June 1914 (D. Cooper, op. cit., no. 100).  Although much of the newspaper is obscured, imparting the disheveled appearance of a café tabletop, word fragments are left visible, inviting the viewer to guess at their original meaning.

Gris juxtaposes the mechanical printing of the newspaper with his own careful recreation of the text from a wine label to the right - vin rosé. This juxtaposition of printed material with the artist's re-presentation thereof was a central trope in the semiotic play of cubism. Gris foregrounds the artist's hand, taking time to carefully re-construct the printed wine label in a manner that presages the early Pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. At upper right, Gris paints an exaggerated trompe l'oeil bottle cork extending towards the viewer that contradicts the flattening of pictorial space throughout the remaining composition. The social comity among the Cubists at this moment carries through in the appearance of wine and liquor bottles throughout their 1914 still-lifes.

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Gris' dealer who was once in possession of this painting, provided the following analysis of Gris' particular Cubist style:  "... [T]he emblems which Juan Gris invented 'signified' the whole of the object which he meant to represent. All the details are not present. The emblems are not comprehensible without previous visual experiences. . . The picture contains not the forms which have been collected in the visual memory of the painter, but new forms, forms which differ from those of the 'real' objects we meet within the visible world, forms which are truly emblems and which only become objects in the perception of the spectator" (D.-H. Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His Life and Work, London, 1947, p. 90).

The present work belonged for many years to Kahnweiler, who sent it to New York for sale after the Second World War.  It was purchased by Mrs. Benjamin Watson, a resident of New York's upper east side, and then eventually by the Pittsburgh industrialist G. David Thompson, whose collection boasted some of the greatest examples of early 20th century art.